


The Story Of Us

by activevirtues



Category: Alias
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-05-16
Updated: 2004-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-02 20:53:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/activevirtues/pseuds/activevirtues





	The Story Of Us

__The knock on the door came at 12:47 in the afternoon on June 5th, 2010. She was halfway through yet another reading of _As You Like It_, making notes in the margins for later use in a handout for her sixth form students. _Pride and Prejudice_ was on the television as background noise, and Elizabeth had just come upon Mr. Darcy in dishabille in his gardens when Sydney put the book down on the couch and went to answer. She moved slowly through the house to the front door. Five years after the bomb blast and fire, and her leg still hurt, visibly slowing her down. The person knocked again as she tried to hurry, but sometimes it seemed that when she rushed herself, she ended up going slower than if she had just taken her time. She didn’t use a cane, but privately she admitted that it was only her pride that kept her from doing so. Another knock sounded at the door a moment before she opened it.

Standing on her doorstep, one hand shoved in the pocket of his buttery black leather coat, was Sark. A tiny girl with corn-silk hair stood beside him, gripping his other hand like a lifeline and looking up at Sydney with huge hazel eyes.

She couldn’t think of anything to say. Had she still been a spy, she would have kicked him in the face or shot at him or at the very least said something witty and sarcastic. When had she become susceptible to this level of panic? She couldn’t speak around the lump in her throat. Briefly she contemplated pinching herself to see if she had fallen into some strange dream, a result of reading too much Shakespeare, but then Sark spoke. “Hello, Sydney. Can we talk?”

He looked so earnest, so damn boyish and innocent that she knew that something had to be going on. Well, she would have known something was going on if it weren’t for the fact that Sark was standing on her doorstep looking at her with the same angelic, I’ve-never-used-a-blowtorch-on-anyone expression as the little girl beside him – although she pulled it off slightly better. Silently, Sydney stood aside to let him and the doll-like girl in. He wouldn’t kill or torture her in front of a child, she thought. Maybe shoot her with a tranq dart.

“Sit here and play with your Tinkertoys, Catherine,” Sark said to the child. “We have things to discuss.”

The girl nodded, and Sydney noticed that she was wearing a child-sized blue leather backpack. She sat on the rug in the living room, opened up the backpack, and extracted a container of Tinkertoys.

Sark turned to Sydney. “Is there somewhere we could speak? The kitchen, maybe?”

Sydney nodded in the direction of the kitchen. She still hadn’t the faintest idea what to say.

He followed her into the kitchen, sat at the small island in the center. They looked through the large doorway into the living room, where Catherine had begun separating the toys into small, organized piles.

“You had no idea we were coming, did you?”

Ah. She knew exactly how to answer this one. “If I knew, do you think I’d be here?”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Obviously not. So you don’t know why we’re here, then, do you?”

She was sorely tempted to reply, “Selling Girl Scout Cookies?” but managed to bite it back in favor of something a little calmer. “Not in the slightest, but the sooner you fill me in on what your little game is, the sooner I can slam the door in your face and get back to my lesson plans.” It did beg the question, though. What reason could Sark have for showing up at her home with a child?

“I’m afraid you might not want to do that quite yet, Sydney.” He took a deep breath. “There’s really no easy way to announce this, but I need you to not say anything until I’m done. I think… I think you need to hear this, and I’m going to tell you everything I know.” He took another deep breath, and began in the manner of one who had rehearsed a speech many times and knew what he was saying by heart.

“The surrogate… she was six months pregnant when I found out what the Covenant had done. I had assumed that when I ascended to the upper stratus of the organization, I would have more control over the agenda. I was, sadly, mistaken. The Rambaldi cells were all destroyed in the fire you set. Your ova, however, were not.”

She looked up at him in shock, but he didn’t seem to notice, lost in his careful explanation.

“Somehow, the organization discovered that my genetic connection with the Romanov family also meant a genetic connection with Rambaldi himself – his son married a Russian princess, and their daughter married a Romanov. By the time I realized that my…” Here he seemed to falter, but recovered quickly enough. “By the time I realized that the Covenant had stolen my genetic material, our daughter was too real to me to kill. I kidnapped the surrogate – so proud to be pregnant with the Passenger – and took her to Australia. To Sydney.” He laughed mirthlessly. “My little joke. I changed my name, my identity, and tried to figure out what to do with an infant daughter whose mother, sadly, died in childbirth.”

She couldn't refrain from interrupting. She needed to know. “Did you…”

“Ironically, no. I would have, but there was no need. She had a heart disease, PPH. Women with PPH are advised by doctors to not risk childbirth, as a large percentage die in labor, but the surrogate was so devoted to the ideas of the Covenant that she didn’t inform them that giving birth would almost certainly kill her. I’m not sure it would have made a difference if she had, though. You know the Covenant.”

Some woman had borne her child, then, and died from it. There was so much she’d missed out on. Her hand moved, seemingly on its own, to stroke the scar on her abdomen, and then moved down to rest where she should have carried her daughter. She looked back up at Sark, who was still gazing out the window, his voice emotionless as he continued with his explanation.

“Catherine Irina Hollier was born on April 7th, 2005 at 12:45 am. She was…” Here his voice caught in his throat, slightly hoarse, as if he hadn’t used it for a very long time. He noticed it, and turned back to her, caught her eyes with his as if trying to make her see something in them that words alone couldn’t explain. “She was wrinkly and red and crying so loudly I thought… I don’t know what I thought. But somehow, the next time I saw her, she was... perfect -- this tiny pink human who was so much easier than I thought she was going to be and so much harder than I ever imagined.”

_Six years had changed him_, came the thought, reacting not so much to the words as to the tone of his voice. She had heard that voice serious, or sarcastic, or cold. She had heard it earnest, boyish, trying to convince her that he could be something he wasn’t. His voice had never wavered, though, in any situation in which she encountered him. It wavered here as he spoke, and then regained its calm as he resumed his narrative.

“Her first plane ride was before she could talk. She fell asleep after take-off and woke up just before landing, and didn’t cry at all. To this day, I don’t know what I did right. We went to Japan first, lived there through her first word, her first step, her first book – _Winkin, Blinkin and Nod_. She still speaks Japanese. And German, which was where we went next. We lived in Heidelberg until she was four. Then I started looking for you.

“Irina, surprisingly, was about as forthcoming as Jack. She told me that you had left the business, and that they had both done the same. She discouraged me from finding you, and I didn’t argue. I didn’t tell her about Catherine, though. I’m almost positive that she’s going to do me serious bodily injury when she finds out, but… I didn’t want to share.” He shrugged. His eyes studied her without heat, without any sort of reaction, as if he had just finished a carefully-rehearsed speech and could not find anything else inside of him to give.

“Why are you _sharing_ now?” It came out with more rancor than she intended, but he didn’t seem to notice, or was resigned to it enough not to comment.

“She wanted to meet you. She wouldn’t stop talking about it. I can’t… when she argues so logically, so seriously that you’d think she were an adult instead of a five-year-old tyrant in pigtails, I don’t think even your assistant director Kendall could say no to her.”

“And when…” Her throat choked around it. She coughed, fighting back tears, and continued as if nothing had happened. “When did you tell her about me?”

“About three hours after she was born. And again, whenever I couldn’t think of what to do with her. I’m a spy – what do I know about a baby? I’d read to her from whatever book or newspaper I was reading or tell her about her mother, who if she was lucky she’d turn out like instead of her fucked-up father. Although I believe I use a different phrase when I tell her the story.”

That caught her attention. “The story?” she asked sharply.

He had the grace to look sheepish. “Yes, well. Catherine’s favorite bedtime story… it’s the one about her mother. Her mother who could kill five men, each twice her size, while wearing ball gowns and speaking four languages. Her mother, who couldn’t meet her yet but will someday, I promise. Her mother, who didn’t need a man to rescue her like in the other fairy tales. Besides the Twelve Dancing Princesses, it’s the only one she’s never gotten sick of.”

The affection in his voice was audible, and lit up his eyes. She hadn’t seen this Sark before, and found herself wishing that the stories that he told his daughter were true. She was no longer the woman he had respected.

“Eventually,” he continued, his voice lighter, “she got tired of taking my word for it, I think. Or I got tired of telling it. Either way, I… I know this is a shock. If you want us to go, we will. Catherine loved Italy last time we were there, and it’s been so long since I’ve lived in Rome.” His voice had changed again, and was now as blank as his expression. He was trying to show nothing, and would have succeeded but for his hands, which gripped his knees so tightly that she was afraid he would bruise them. He didn’t seem to notice, though. Either he was out of practice from being retired for so long, or his skills were slipping.

“It’s just… so much to process.” She felt numb. Her hand moved up to her forehead, rubbed for a second before moving to pinch the bridge of her nose – anything to relieve immense pressure building up inside her skull.

“I know.”

They were silent for a while, staring into the living room where their – _God_, Sydney could barely wrap her mind around the word, so unfamiliar in such a context – their daughter was silently building the Eiffel Tower with Tinkertoys. Her face was screwed up in concentration, mouth pursed as she added onto the structure until it toppled over. She shot a glance at her father – so Sarklike that for a moment, Sydney found herself startled at the very existence of a tiny blonde Sark-in-miniature, gleefully making buildings and collapsing them.

“Tinkertoys are her favorite at the moment,” Sark murmured. “She’ll be moving on to something else in a few weeks.”

“She’s…”

“I know,” he murmured, eyes warm as they lit on the little girl in the living room.

The child was definitely aware of their focus now. She carefully deconstructed the half-toppled tower, storing the set before skipping over to join Sydney and Sark.

“You told her, then?” she asked her father softly, not looking at Sydney.

“I did,” he said solemnly.

“So, are you going to…”

“If you like.”

“Dad!”

He grinned, the first real smile Sydney had ever seen on Sark’s face, and turned to address her. “Sydney Alice Bristow, allow me to introduce Catherine Irina Hollier. Catherine, meet Sydney.”

Catherine gave a blinding smile when Sydney accepted her proffered hand with an amused glance at Sark. “You have impeccable manners.”

“Daddy says that manners make people want to be nice to you even when you don’t deserve it. But he also says that I should always make sure to deserve it, even if other people don’t.”

“Very wise indeed.” And about as un-Sarklike a thing to say as she’d ever heard – the last part, at least. She wasn’t sure what she would have expected had she been told that her child was being raised by a former professional assassin and ex-head of an international crime syndicate, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t the tiny girl staring up at her with intelligent hazel eyes and a grin that matched her own perfectly.

“Can I call you…”

“Catherine, I seem to recall that we already had this discussion. Twice.”

“Yes, Daddy.” She didn’t look chastened at all, and still beamed up at Sydney like she’d just given her a gigantic stuffed giraffe.

“Do you want to draw something for Miss Bristow, or did you remember to bring your book from the hotel?”

“_Daddy_! Of course I remembered.” She looked affronted, slightly embarrassed, as if he’d asked her whether she remembered to wear underwear.

“Then go get it, Kitten. Miss Bristow and I have things to discuss.”

She looked to be on the verge of a pout, but then nodded and ran out of the room as if determined to be back before they finished discussing whatever adult matters they had to talk about without her in the room.

She had watched the exchange with fascination. It was all so surreal that she was still not quite sure that she hadn’t dreamed it all. “That’s not… normal, is it?”

“The book? For her it is. I don’t think she remembers a time that she didn’t have a book attached to one of her hands. She started talking so early, and it seemed like a… natural sort of progression.”

Sydney considered this for a second before Sark spoke up again.

“We needed to…”

“Uh, yeah. Go ahead.” She suspected what was coming, tried to prepare for it, and found herself still startled when he spoke as bluntly as if he were detailing a mission.

“There’s no way to ease into this, Sydney, so I’ll be straightforward. Do you want her? Because we’ll stay in Ireland if you do, but if you don’t I think it would be best if we left imme—”

“Sark. Julian. Just…” She took a deep breath. “I’m… I don’t have anyone. I’m still weak from the…” She shook her head, trying to clear it. “I don’t know how good a mother I’d be.” She should have stopped there, intended to stop there, but found everything that was in her overworked mind seemed to be coming out in a single breath. “I was fine with being alone here, in the quiet, for the rest of my life. Everything was so loud and fast and painful -- and here it’s numb, and I don’t want to stop hiding. But I don’t want to teach her that… that hiding from the pain is an okay thing to do. I’m just too weak to do anything else.”

He watched her speak as if she were a fantastic actress auditioning for a role, appraisingly, and then answered, choosing his words carefully. “I have no doubt that anything and everything you would teach Catherine would be something she would be better off knowing.”

“She’s mine.”

“Look at her, Sydney.”

“She’s mine.” It wasn’t a question.

He let out a long sigh. “Mine too, but yes. If you want her, she is yours.”

Sydney felt the tears welling up in her eyes and blinked to clear them. “I have a daughter.”

“Yes,” he agreed quietly. “Yes, you do.”

\---

Her first phone call after Sark and Catherine left to return to their B&amp;B was to her parents.

“Mom?”

“Sydney! This is… not entirely unexpected.” She could hear the smile in her mother’s voice, a ray of sunlight warming her across the miles.

“You weren’t going to tell me Sark was looking for me?”

“No, honey, I wasn’t.” Irina waited a beat and continued, “I didn’t tell him where you were, but if he was determined to find you, he would have done it with or without my consent.”

“It’s actually a good thing he found me.”

Irina’s voice sounded surprised. “How’s that?”

“I think you should get Dad on the line as well. He… I should tell you both.”

“Sydney, are you in trouble?” she asked quietly. “Whatever it is… we’ll be there right away.”

“Mom… get Dad. Please.”

A minute or so of listening to her own breath, shuddering in and out nervously, passed before Jack picked up the phone. “Sydney, what’s the matter?”

“Dad… Mom…”

“Sydney, please. Whatever it is, we can help.”

“I’ve got a daughter.”

The other line was silence.

“She’s… she’s five,” Sydney offered.

Jack spoke slowly, firmly, as if he could make what she had just said disappear by the force of his convictions. “That’s impossible, Sydney.”

“It’s really not,” returned Irina. “Sydney’s ova were stolen by the Covenant – you know that.”

“She destroyed them. She watched them burn.”

“Well, obviously she didn’t destroy all of them. She’s incontrovertibly yours, Sydney?”

“She looks like me. She’s… you should meet her, Dad. You’d like her, I think.”

“Who’s the father, then, Sydney?” asked Jack.

“Dad…” She sighed, and then continued. “It’s Sark.”

It was Irina who spoke first. “He didn’t tell me. He’s…”

“He said you were probably going to do him serious injury for not telling you. But he’s done… surprisingly well raising your granddaughter, so I hope you’ll reconsider.” She smiled, trying to put as much cheer into her voice as possible, hoping to convince her parents that everything would be okay. “At least until you meet her. You will come soon, won’t you?”

“We’ll take the next plane out,” Irina assured her.

“Sark had better be there when I arrive,” Jack said calmly. “I think we need to have a discussion.”

“Goodbye, Dad. Mom. Love you.”

“We love you too, honey.”

Sydney let the phone drop onto the couch, then leaned back, and rested her head against the wall behind her. She wasn’t even sure how to be a daughter, most of the time. Having one was yet another thing she was sure she’d mess up beyond repair.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to be six again.

She padded to the freezer and settled for a pint of ice cream. It wasn’t cookie dough – Ben &amp; Jerry’s hadn’t yet made it to this part of Ireland – but it was this or drink herself into a stupor, and she had a sinking feeling that dealing with a hangover should not be mixed with entertaining both a five-year-old and Sark.

When she thought about it that way, though, the tequila was looking better and better.

  
It was nine at night, and Catherine was still too excited to go to bed. “The lady we met today was really my mother, Daddy?”

“Catherine…”

“She’s so pretty! You thought she pretty, too. I could tell.” She gave him a look, a little too penetrating for his comfort. Five-year-olds were not supposed to be this smart. At times like this, he regretted watching CNN with her instead of Blue’s Clues. Damn Nickelodeon, with their mind-numbing children’s programming and worldwide availability. If it hadn’t been quite so impossible to watch without wanting to take a blowtorch to Joe and his idiotic, badly drawn dog, he might have a five-year-old who was as oblivious as she was supposed to be at this age.

“What I thought doesn’t matter. She is your mother, but as I explained to you before, she and I used to hate each other.”

“And that’s why she didn’t look happy to see us today?”

“She didn’t know why we were there, Kitten. I didn’t tell her we were coming.”

“That was not polite, Daddy.”

If it weren’t so bizarre, if the world weren’t turning sideways on its axis, he would have laughed. He had raised a five-year-old who was now lecturing him on etiquette. “No, it wasn’t, but it was necessary. Sometimes, you can do things that aren’t polite if you have a good enough reason. Your mother used to hate me – she still does, I think – and I was afraid that if I had told her we were coming, she wouldn’t have been there when we arrived.”

“She doesn’t hate me, though, does she?” Catherine spoke wistfully, looking up at him with eyes so full of hope that he reflexively gathered her closer to him.

“Nobody hates you, sweeting. You’re perfect.”

“She doesn’t know that yet, though, does she?”

He laughed. “She’s agreed to give us a chance to make her see it.”

“Good. I think I’ll wear my white dress tomorrow, Daddy. I want to be as cute as possible.” She announced it seriously, as grave as a general announcing a battle-plan to his troops.

Sark kept his face as serious as hers, though it was a near thing. “She’d love you if you were wearing your play clothes, but you do what you think is best.” He ruffled her hair. “Either way, whatever happens, you’re mine. You know that, don’t you? Mine.”

“You’re mine too, Daddy.” She leaned up to give him a soft kiss on the cheek. “But I want her to be mine as well.”

\---

Sydney barely slept, and when she finally drifted off, sleep was fitful and filled with dreams of Danny and of Vaughn and of Sark, of the children she’d always wanted to have and the child that was now part of her life. She watched as Catherine grew before her eyes, from a tiny little girl to a child on the edge of adolescence, from an eleven-year-old with hope in her eyes to a teenager, who managed to know it all and want the world and still be strangely innocent. The teenager transformed into a young woman, powerful and beautiful, the best parts of both her parents. She stood eye-to-eye with Sydney, smiled at her with respect and friendship and _love_. As she watched, the young woman aged, looked off to the side at someone behind Sydney, and her smile grew different, changed. Sydney knew that smile – she saw it reflected in Danny’s eyes, once upon a time, and in Vaughn’s before everything had become painful and wrong. Then her daughter changed again – now she was pregnant, heavy with Sydney’s grandchild. Catherine glowed, her skin luminous, as if it was a star that grew in her womb and not a child. Dream-Sydney reached her hand out, dream-Catherine mirrored her motion – and then the image of her grown daughter dissolved, and something was pulling her out of sleep and back into the world-that-was.

Her eyes opened, already filling with tears at the loss of the dream. This, then, was what she might have missed. This was what Sark could have kept for himself – the weight of tears dampening her shoulder, all the joys shared in excited voices. Every accomplishment, announced proudly over the dinner table. Every bedtime story, every hug, every smile, and every problem – he could have kept it all, and she never would have known.

Curling up with her pillow, she started to cry in earnest for every first she’d already missed. As she slipped back into sleep, she promised herself that she wouldn’t miss anything else.

\---

Sark knocked on the door at exactly one the next afternoon. Catherine stood by his side clutching his hand, dressed in her favorite white dress, pale hair plaited down her back and tied in a white grosgrain bow.

Sydney raised an eyebrow as she opened the door. “Well, you two went all out, didn’t you? Come on in. I hope you’re okay eating ice cream in that dress.”

Catherine gave her a look that was so dignified and _Sarklike_ that for a minute she found herself blinking stupidly at her daughter. “I would never spill on this dress.” _‘I would never get blood on this Armani.’ God, Sark, she really is yours, isn’t she?_

“Of course,” Sydney responded with a smile. “Come in, please. I think we have a lot to talk about, and a chocolate sundae always makes the difficult things easier.”

She led them to the kitchen, where she took out a carton of ice cream, chocolate syrup, and three bowls. As she searched her kitchen for the ice cream scoop, she began, “We might as well get everything out in the open right now. We’ve wasted so much time – I’ve lost so much time – and I don’t want to lose anymore.”

When she looked up from rifling through the silverware drawer, Sark and Catherine were grinning at her – Catherine with Sydney’s mouth, Sark with that gorgeous lopsided smile that made his face so much more remarkable than it would have been had his smile been flawless. _Are we a family?_ The thought startled Sydney, but not as much as her mind’s reply: _We could be._

As she brandished the scoop with a laugh and started piling the ice cream in a bowl for her daughter, her mind completed the thought. _We will be._

“So, Catherine. Tell me everything about you. What do you do for fun?”

Her daughter launched into a monologue about the joys of tree climbing, Tinkertoys and playing cops and robbers with her daddy. For a few minutes, in the warmth of the sunlit kitchen, the three of them were a unit.

  
The phone rang, turning the easy conversation awkward as Sydney answered it. “Hello?”

“Sydney, we’re at the airport,” said Jack without preamble. “We’ll be there in a few hours.”

“Okay. I’ll, um, see you then.” She hung up the phone and turned to Sark. “That was my father. He and Mom are on their way.”

“From the Maldives? That will take a while.”

“Ah, not quite. From the airport in Galway.”

Catherine bounced on her knees on the barstool. “Do I get to meet your parents, Miss Bristow?”

She paused. “Yes, you do. And, Catherine? You know, you can call me Mom, if you want. Since I… well. Since I am.”

The sheer brilliance of the grin that spread over Catherine’s face dazed her. She was sure she would remember the moment for the rest of her life.

\---

(The Tale of Irina)

Catherine Irina Hollier had already heard the story of the woman who had unknowingly given her name to her grandchild. It was one of the many stories her father had told her in an effort to explain to his daughter what, exactly, she was destined to be. She realized from a very young age that her father was a great believer in destiny, in the battle between free will and fate. He had learned it from Irina, in fact – but although Irina swore that it was free will, not destiny, that had more control, Catherine would learn that her father had had his life turned upside down against his will one time too many to believe that free will did anything but make humankind feel better about being pawns in a cosmic chess game.

He had, of course, not explained the pointlessness of free will to Catherine. His reasoning, she knew, was quite simple: if it were meant to be, she would come to discover it on her own. But he had explained Irina to her, as well as Irina could be explained to anyone.

Irina’s story had never been Catherine’s favorite. It was too much like hearing the story of Snow White from the point of view of the evil queen – yes, she has her own side of the story, but even to someone who hasn’t heard the story told the usual way, it doesn’t quite _feel_ right. There was no denying, however, that the story always made Catherine look at her father differently.

The words were always the same, and Catherine could, by the time she outgrew bedtime stories, recite them by heart.

“Irina,” her father would begin, “is smarter than I am.” He would look down at her, kiss her nose. “Someday, you might be as well.” He would wink, and then continue. “Once, for a while before you were born, she fooled the world into thinking not only that she was dead, not only that she was an entirely different person, but that a person she created from her own imagination was the most powerful, most frightening man in the world. She raised me, so I was lucky enough to see just how she did it. And she taught me most of what I know.

“Back before your mother or I was born, Irina was an agent for a country that doesn’t exist anymore. The organization she worked for sent her to the USA to meet and marry an up-and-coming agent in the CIA by the name of Jack Bristow – your grandfather. She didn’t know who he was, what he was like. All she knew was that her devotion to her country was so great that she would do as they asked. So she went to the States, convinced your grandfather she was an American literature professor, and made him fall in love with her.”

“How do people make someone fall in love with them?” Catherine had asked the first time she heard the story.

“If I knew the answer to that question,” he had answered, “I’d be a richer man than I am.”

He would continue, “He didn’t realize what was going on, and for a while, she was happy. He was a kind and loving husband, devoted to her as much as he was to his country. Sometimes she felt guilty for tricking him, but like him, she had made a promise to her nation. So they went on living their lies in contentment.

“But it happened that Irina got pregnant, and it was then, contemplating her problems, that she realized that she was more in love with her husband and the child that would be coming than her country. She wanted the life she had, not the life she had left behind.

“So she had the child, a beautiful girl who she and her husband named Sydney.”

“My mother,” Catherine would say.

“Yes, your mother.” He’d smile and continue to stroke her hair. “And for a while, your mother and grandparents were all happy together. But eventually, Irina’s country called her back. They made it so that she had no choice but to return – and so she did, with her heart breaking, but she did what she had to do. She left her husband and daughter behind, let them think that she was dead. And she went back to her country and told her superiors most of what had happened.

“The problem was, although she was exceedingly good at what she did, they had become suspicious that her loyalties had changed. They imprisoned her in a horrible place, far away from anything and everything that she loved. It was only through her own daring and intelligence that she managed to escape. When she did, she vanished. She began gathering contacts, forming an organization. And one day, when I was much younger, she met me.” Here he would pause, look down at her to make sure she was still awake. She always was. This was her favorite part of the story.

“When she met me, I was very young and very inexperienced, but she saw things in me that nobody else did. So she gave me a chance, mostly out of pity, I think, and sent me to do a task that really didn’t need doing. She sent me to look after Sydney.”

“I was a few years younger than your mother. She had just entered university, and Irina… Irina had been following up on her daughter over the years, but had never actually sent someone to follow her, to keep track of her life. So I did.” Catherine could tell that at this point in the story, there was much that her father wasn’t telling her. He would look off to the side, out the window, and continue to absentmindedly stroke her hair.

“Then someone died, and I moved up in the organization and stopped following up on Sydney. It was at this time that Sydney found herself involved in an organization called SD-6. She learned everything about how to be a spy, and she worked hard for SD-6. She believed they were a special, secret part of the government. When she found out that they weren’t, she went to the government and asked to help them fight against SD-6.

“Soon enough, though, Sydney discovered that her mother was probably still alive, and Irina and I in turn discovered that Sydney was looking for clues to Irina’s disappearance. Sydney and I met officially for the first time while she still had no idea that her mother was the head of the organization that I was working for.” A slight smile would curve her father’s mouth, but Catherine never asked about it. “And when Irina found that Sydney was getting too close to finding out her secret, and when some of Irina’s contacts were threatening both their lives, she came back into Sydney’s life. Soon after that, she discussed a plan with me to take down SD-6 and all its partners, and turned herself in to the CIA in an effort to get to know her daughter again.

“There was so much of her plan that she couldn’t tell, so at first Sydney was suspicious and angry. This, of course, was nothing to what her husband, Jack, felt. Technically, they were still husband and wife. He had been used and abandoned and wanted revenge. So she slowly gained their trust, enough to fulfill the plan we had discussed before she went into custody. I led Sydney to information that was vital to the destruction of the organization, and then Irina escaped – Sloane, the head of SD-6, had also escaped and Irina needed to be free to take him down. But he learned of her plan, and foiled it. Irina went after him once more, and persuaded me to let myself be captured in order to feed the CIA the information necessary to bring him in.

“It was at this time that your mother disappeared. She was kidnapped by Sloane’s new organization, The Covenant. Two years she waited to escape, and finally she managed to, but at the cost of her memory. The Covenant had done some things to her that she didn’t want to remember, so she wiped out two years of her life, and when she woke up it was as if it had never happened.”

“Wow,” Catherine could never keep herself from exclaiming.

“I agree,” he’d reply, and continue. “I was still in custody of the government, and one of the first things that the Covenant asked for when they discovered that Sydney had returned to the CIA was me. It looked like they wanted to kill me, but after I was given to them in exchange for some hostages, it turned out that they wanted my money, and were willing to either kill me or work with me.

“During the time Sydney was missing, Jack and Irina had worked together to find out what had happened. After she came back, they continued to search – this time, for clues to her memory loss. Eventually, the truth came out – it usually does – and they continued to work together to defeat the Covenant, with which I had been blackmailed into affiliating myself.

“When Irina contacted me again and asked me to help her defeat the Covenant, I agreed. I was tired of being blackmailed and treated poorly. When the Covenant saw my loyalty waning, they did the only thing they could think of to do. They made you so that they could have something to take away from me.” He would kiss her forehead and smile down at her, lying through his teeth. It was, she realized when she looked back on her father’s stories, the only thing that he ever lied to her about.

“Irina came up with the plan to bring about the collapse of the organization. Jack pitched it to the CIA, and with some information from me, they executed it. It was only later that I realized that Sydney had been injured earlier and never participated. But I had you to think of. And after your grandmother’s plan was successful, I left, and took you with me. Irina and Jack left also, and live together still. All that working together did a lot to ameliorate the wrongs they’d done to each other over the years.”

“What’s ‘ameliorate’?” she asked the first time she heard the story.

“It means to make better. To put to right. To heal.”

“It’s a good word.”

“Yes.” With this, the story finished. He would kiss her again, pull the blankets tight around her, and smile down at her before turning the lights out. “Now go to sleep.” And she would.

\---

When Irina and Jack knocked on Sydney’s door a few hours later, Catherine was the first person to answer. Sydney watched as she stood patiently, allowing Jack and Irina to look first down at her, and then back to where Sark and Sydney stood at the entrance to the hallway.

“Hello,” Irina said, smiling down at the tiny blonde child holding the door open. “I’m Sydney’s mom.”

“I know who you are,” answered Catherine. “Daddy told me lots about you.”

Irina’s smile grew wider. “Oh, really. All good, I hope.” She looked up at Sark, whose expression was as carefully blank as Sydney had ever seen him manage.

“Oh, of course.” She looked up guilelessly at Irina, then held out her hand. “I’m Catherine Irina Hollier.”

She was definitely amused now, and shot another glance at Sark. “What a lovely name. May we come in?”

“It’s not my house,” said Catherine apologetically.

“Mom, Dad, come on in,” Sydney said, walking forward. “You… you remember Julian Sark?”

“I should hope Irina at least remembers me.”

“Don’t be stupid, Sark, of course I do.” Irina hugged Sydney. “How are you holding up, dear?”

“I’m fine, Mom. Dad, come in.”

Jack was still staring down at Catherine, who was grinning at him like he’d just given her a present. They said nothing, just studied each other in mutual accord. Words, Sydney realized, would have been superfluous.

When he spoke at last, it was to Catherine, with the brisk tone of voice of one who has just made a decision and intends to see it through for better or worse. “So, you’re Catherine. Has your father been spoiling you?”

Catherine’s eyes grew large and round. _Pulling out all the stops_, Sydney thought as she watched, amused. “No!” she denied. “My father would _never_ spoil me.”

He smiled down at her as Irina looked on, enjoying the exchange immensely, while Sydney found herself taken aback at his words. “Well, I will.”

“We talked about this on the plane over,” she explained later to Sydney as they sat by themselves on the overstuffed floral couch in the parlor while Catherine played on the floor. “I agreed to let him have his little talk with Sark if he’d hold off on jumping to correct conclusions until we arrived here. You know him – he always comes up with the right answer. I think, though, that there are too many right answers in this case, and that it is up to all of us to choose the _best_ one.”

“So he’s talking with Sark now.” Sydney couldn’t keep a smile from curving her lips. “That should be interesting.”

“Yes, I’d imagine so.”

\---

Interesting was not the word Sark would have used. They were out on the back porch, as far away from the women and child in the living room as they could get while still being in proximity to the house, as if Sark’s knowledge of Sydney’s location would bring down every enemy upon them in a matter of minutes, and Jack could deter them just by being nearby. Though this, Sark thought sardonically, was not terribly far from the truth. Most evildoers would no doubt be scared away by the force of Jack’s glower, not to mention the serviceable black gun he was holding to Sark’s forehead at the moment.

“You’re obviously not listening to me, Sark, so let me be clearer. You may assume that your relationship with Irina and the child you have brought with you will stop me from blowing your head off if you so much as look at my daughter the wrong way. This assumption is erroneous. You are to tell me what, exactly, you are doing here and why you are doing it, or I will take actions to show you just how very erroneous your assumptions are.” If the gun had been the kind that needed cocking, Sark was sure that Jack would have done it here to complete the effect. As it was, the expression on his face got more threatening.

Sark took a deep breath, at which the barrel of the gun seemed to dig deeper, and spoke. “I’m not here to hurt your daughter, and if I were, I certainly wouldn’t hurt my own by inducing you to kill me.”

Jack’s hand didn’t waver. “Then you should certainly have no objection to telling me what the hell you’re doing at Sydney’s house.”

“I’d really rather not tell you until I’ve told her, but as you’ve got a loaded firearm to my head, I suppose I could make a slight compromise in my ethics.”

Jack snorted at that, but there was no humor in his voice when he spoke. “Stop stalling.”

“You are aware that your destruction of the Covenant’s structure and most of its upper echelon did not, in fact, take out everyone who carries some measure of devotion to its beliefs?” At Jack’s nod, he continued. “Well, a few of these fine people have discovered Catherine’s existence.”

“Why should – oh.” Here Jack seemed to lose a measure of his anger at Sark, and sighed, pulling the gun away. “Shit.”

“Very much so.” He paused, thinking through what it was he could say to get Jack’s help and allay his suspicions. “You are as familiar with the works of Rambaldi as I am, and although I’m sure your interest in and affection for them are as minimal as mine, we both can put two and two together. You know my background. You know Sydney’s part in the prophecies. Catherine is the Passenger, and I have no intention of seeing my daughter used as a weapon for a group of incompetent fools with a mindless belief in an inane sixteenth-century mystic. I’d kill the rest of them off myself, but Catherine… I don’t intend to expose her quite so graphically to that sort of thing until she’s ready for it.”

“So you’re in hiding.”

“Yes, well. There are difficulties involved in being a rather visible figure in the international intelligence community and having a daughter you’re trying not to let the world know about. At the moment, I’m as retired as Sydney. I’m well-off enough that I don’t have to work, especially after recouping most of what the Covenant took when they forced my cooperation.” Jack looked surprised at that, so Sark continued. “You didn’t think I’d willingly donate my inheritance – the only money I’ve ever come by in an entirely legal fashion – to an organization I know nothing about, do you? Especially one as badly run as the Covenant. Really, have a little more faith in my intellect than that.”

That got a reaction. “You have been many things over the years, Sark, but stupid was never one of them.” Jack studied him, looking presumably for signs that he was being less than honest. Finding none, he continued. “So you’re here because you…”

“I want to hide, for the moment. I’m working on a plan to get the remainder of those devoted to the ideas of the Covenant out of the way, but it’s difficult when I’m also trying to keep my name out of the community. I’d like help, if you’d be willing to give it. And…” Now his voice took on a note of something else, something threaded through the seriousness that Jack seemed to understand perfectly. “Catherine has a mother. She wants to get to know her. And I can’t say no to that.”

Jack nodded, sat down on a bench across from Sark. He said nothing for a while, just watched his hands. Finally he spoke. “Well, if you’d like assistance in your plans regarding the Covenant, I’ve got a few ideas myself…”

\---

Catherine had pulled Sydney’s unabridged dictionary from the shelf and was slowly thumbing through it, tracing her fingers over the words as if they were intricately illustrated pictures when Sark and Jack walked back inside, each looking solemn. She jumped up immediately and ran to Jack, peering up at him. “Do you know what ‘ameliorate’ means?” She said the word slowly, each syllable carefully enunciated.

“Yes, I do. Do you?” He motioned at Sark to go on as he made conversation with the little girl.

“I need to talk to you,” Sark said. “It needs to be now. Come with me.”

Sydney nodded her assent and walked out of the living room, Sark following behind her solemnly. It had to be something important, something he hadn’t yet told her. She resisted the urge to look back at him, to try to read the expression on his face, trying to stop herself from confronting him until they were truly alone.

When they reached the small study at the back of the house, he shut the door behind him and turned to her with a strange expression on his face.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” she asked calmly. “More you haven’t told me. The real reason why you’re here.”

“You know the real reason I’m here, Sydney,” he shot back. “But there are… circumstances. Things I haven’t shared with you, for reasons of my own.”

She snorted. “Wow, next time you’re revealing something to me, could you try to be a little more cryptic?”

“Sydney, please. This is important.” He took a deep breath, exhaled, and then spoke. “The Covenant was brought down by the CIA six years ago, but there are still people who… are loyal to the ideals of the organization.”

“That’s not surprising. We can’t get everybody. You’re proof of that.”

He rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Sydney, that’s very comforting. Your confidence in my motives is overwhelming.”

“Your motives? You haven’t seen fit to tell me your motives, Sark, which is wholly unsurprising. All you’ve done is shown up on my doorstep and tried to worm your way into my confidence, and the more I think about it, the less I like it. You’ve never been trustworthy – not once. Why should I believe a thing you say, my… my biological offspring notwithstanding?”

“Because I’m telling the truth!” he replied angrily. “Because I’d give my life for your _biological offspring_, and because I’m trying my damnedest to make sure that I don’t have to – that the pieces of the Covenant don’t kill me and take her, turn her into some evil _thing_ they think will help them take over the world.”

She had never seen Sark angry, and it scared her a little. “My motives? My motives are… Christ, I don’t know what my motives are, or how to explain them in a way you’d believe. But there are people out there who know the… the circumstances of Catherine’s birth, and they’ll stop at nothing to get to her. And I’d die before I let that happen, but I don’t think that would be enough.”

“I…” God, here she was – speechless again. If angry Sark was scary, then pleading Sark… pleading Sark was something else entirely, something she didn’t want to name.

Before she could respond, he spoke again, quieter this time. “I’m not… the kind of person who forms attachments. My loyalty is to myself. But she is part of me, Sydney. And she’s part of you, whether or not you can bring yourself to admit it. We need to hide, someplace nobody would think to look for us. We need to find somewhere we can’t be touched.”

“You think that place is here.”

“I know it.”

She sighed, knowing that what she said was a token protest. “This is a bad idea, Sark.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. She could tell that he was trying not to smile. “It’s the only idea I have.”

“Then I guess you’d better stay.”

\---

As they made their way to the front of the house again, Sark explained a few things. “You shouldn’t call me Sark – not in public, at least. I haven’t been Sark in a long time. As you know, Catherine’s last name is Hollier. I’ve been Julian Hollier since she was born. It might be easier if you started calling me by my first name. We can get our story straight later.”

She nodded. Once the decision had been made, it seemed to be infinitely easier to wrap her mind around the idea of Sark being someone else, someone she didn’t know as well as she thought, who wasn’t a cartoon villain with a desire to thwart her at every turn. He was a part of her life now.

“Everything settled?” Irina asked brightly as they entered the room.

“As settled as it’s going to be, I think,” she said. “Why?”

“We’ve got… a few things to take care of,” answered Jack. “We wanted to leave tomorrow, early.”

At that, Catherine looked up from the gigantic dictionary on her lap. “You’re going to come back, right?” Sydney watched in fascination as Catherine’s eyes filled with tears that threatened to spill over at any minute.

“Of course, Katya,” answered Irina. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

“I’ll bring you something special when we come,” Jack said gruffly. “Your father doesn’t spoil you enough.”

Catherine smiled, tears now conspicuously absent. “Okay!” she said brightly, and went back to flipping page by page through the book.

Sydney looked at Sark, whose mouth had quirked in an amused grin. “She’s… really, really good.”

“There is absolutely no question whose daughter she is, Sydney,” he murmured back to her.

Jack and Irina, who had either not caught the comments or chose to ignore them, still looked down at Catherine with identical, mystified expressions.

\---

“I think we should be getting back to the hotel,” Sark said softly a few hours after Jack and Irina had departed that night. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Sydney nodded. “Talk to her about what’s happening, and then bring your things by.”

He bent to pick up the child, who was curled up into a ball on the couch. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow.” She followed him out, watched as he carefully placed Catherine’s sleeping form in the front seat, buckled her in, and shut the door. His hand lifted in a tentative wave before he got into the car and drove away.

She shivered and hugged herself as the wind picked up again, and stood on the porch until the taillights had faded into the night. Everything was changing.

\---

Catherine woke up as he was laying her in the bed at the hotel. “Daddy?” she whispered around a yawn.

“Yes, Kitten?” God, she was beautiful like this, curled up in blankets, looking at him like he was the world. He couldn’t resist stroking her hair, the same shade his had been when he was her age.

“What will we do from here?”

He sat down on the bed beside her, pulled her closer to him. “Well,” he said, “Sydney wants us to stay with her for a while. So tomorrow, we’ll get our things packed back up and go to Sydney’s house.”

She nodded, seeming satisfied with his answer. He moved off the bed to get her pajamas from her suitcase when she spoke again. “Will we live with Mom forever?”

He stopped, glad for a moment that he was turned away from her. He closed his eyes, trying to think of an answer to that question, and then sighed. “We might live with her a long time, sweeting, but there’s no such thing as forever, except for how long I’ll love you.” He reached into the suitcase, found her pajamas. “We’ll talk about this with Sydney later, though. Get your pajamas on and go to sleep.”

She complied, wriggling into her nightclothes and under the covers, and within a matter of minutes was fast asleep.

Sark didn’t find rest so easily. Instead, he stayed awake, looking down at his child sleeping peacefully in the dark hotel room. Everything was changing.

\---Sark was pulled forcefully out of a dream about dancing guns wearing red dresses and knives with Irina’s head as hilts by his daughter’s flying cannonball onto the bed. “Daddy! Daddy! Wake up, we need to get _ready_.”

He was on his feet immediately, gun in his hand and ready to fire before he ascertained that it was excitement and not danger that had prompted his daughter to dive-bomb him into the waking world. Calmly he re-engaged the safety and put the gun away again, looking at Catherine sternly. “We talked about this, didn’t we, Catherine?”

She gazed up at him, eyes wide and round. “What do you mean?”

“What are the two instances in which you may wake me up in such a manner?” he asked sternly.

“Oh,” she responded. “That.”

“Yes, _that_. What are the circumstances, Catherine?”

“Christmas.”

“And?”

She heaved a put-upon sigh. “And if I am in imminent mortal danger,” she parroted.

“That’s right.” She looked so unapologetic, so much like Sydney in every fight they’d ever had that he had difficulty keeping a straight face. “Now which of these circumstances applied this morning? It’s June, so I’m relatively certain it isn’t Christmas. Are you in imminent mortal danger?”

“No, but I –”

“Is there someone currently in the room carrying a gun, threatening to shoot you?”

“No, but I –”

“Is the B&amp;B on _fire_?”

“_Daddy_!” she exclaimed, frustrated. “Today is the day we move to Mom’s house and I wanted to get ready _now_!”

Briefly he wondered whether it was horrible that he enjoyed teasing his child. She was so easy to bait sometimes, so sure that everything she did was exactly right, so serious and intent that he couldn’t resist. “I’m going to go back to sleep.” _Three… two… one…_

“Daddy!”

“All right, I’m up.”

It didn’t take them very long to get their things together. Most of the clothes Sark had brought for them were still in their suitcases. Sark watched his daughter meticulously fold the dirty clothes – there was no use in doing something if one didn’t do it well, and Catherine did nearly everything well.

When they had finished packing everything back up, Sark turned to his daughter. “Now we wait… three hours until we go to Sydney’s house.”

“_Three hours_?” Catherine looked on the verge of a pout.

“If you don’t want to wait, Kitten, don’t wake me up at dawn.” Ah, she was definitely pouting now. He ruffled her hair, smiled down at her gently. “Let’s get some breakfast. That will kill some time.”

“There had better be waffles,” Catherine muttered, slipping her hand into his and pulling him out the door.

\---

They knocked on her door at 8:30 in the morning, and as she shuffled to answer it, Sydney got the slightest sense of déjà vu. It doubled as she opened the door to find Catherine staring up at her, clutching Sark’s hand.

It was then that she noticed the suitcases – two of them, black, neither large enough for a two-week vacation, let alone a stay of the duration that Sydney assumed this would be. “That’s it?”

Sark nodded. “Most of our things are still at our flat in London. I wasn’t sure…” _if you would slam the door in my face_, Sydney filled in when he paused, “… how long you would want us to stay. I didn’t want to presume.”

This was so unlike Sark that for a moment all she could do was look from the suitcases to Sark and back. “You didn’t…” _You always presume_, she wanted to say. _You always get what you want, and make sure everything works out as you planned. _

He seemed to follow her line of thought, and a small, serious smile bowed his lips as he watched her study him. Finally, he spoke. “Were you going to invite us in, or have you thought better of it?”

“Um, of course. Come in.” She stepped back to allow them to enter. As they passed, she said the first thing that came to mind. “How was your morning?”

The look on Sark’s face was so wildly unlike him – for an instant he looked young, like the weight on his shoulders had never existed, like he was the man he might have been had everything been different – and then it passed and he was left looking solemnly down at Catherine, who grinned at him as if he had just told a fantastic joke. “Fine,” he said.

“You’ll tell me what happened later, won’t you?” she said to Catherine, bending down until they were face to face.

Catherine’s arms went around her, pulling her close. She smelled of syrup and strawberries and child. “Of course,” she whispered in Sydney’s ear, and then pulled back. “But after Daddy stops eavesdropping.”

Sark hefted the suitcases and strode inside, leaving Sydney to stare after him, still crouched down next to Catherine, who smiled.

\---

Sydney had cleared the study at the back of the house for Catherine, moving a small mattress in on the floor and clearing off the bookshelf in lieu of a dresser. There was already a guest bedroom set up for when her parents came to visit, and it seemed obvious to put Sark there, at the far end of the hallway, near the study and as far away from her own bedroom as possible.

Maybe it wasn’t just logic that prompted the decision, but she wasn’t delving too deep into her own reasons.

Sydney showed them to where they would be sleeping until Syd and Sark either figured out the Covenant thing or got sick of each other. As she walked, she studied him. He seemed to be looking at the house with new eyes – more approving now, perhaps, than when he was not a resident.

She shook the thought off as she opened the door to the study. “Catherine, I know it’s not much, but it’s really all I have.”

“Thank you for this, Sydney,” Sark said quietly, his hand absently stroking his daughter’s hair. “We really hadn’t expected such generosity.”

She was serious when she replied, though what came out was slightly more than she had intended to say. “We’re family now, Julian, whether or not we intended to be. It’s not an act of generosity, it’s just what is.”

Catherine, who had been watching the exchange silently, spoke. “I told you, Daddy.”

His hand continued to skim through her hair, and he looked down at her with an expression that Sydney thought would have been wistful on anyone but Sark. “You did, Kitten.”

For a moment, she felt like she was watching Sark and his daughter through a window, completely apart from the two beautiful people gazing at each other with such perfect affection. She absently rubbed the heel of her hand over her heart, wanting to make the ache disappear, and turned to Sark. “Let me show you your room,” she said, and walked out the door, trusting that he would follow.

\---

After the bags had been put away, she led them to the kitchen, poured Catherine a glass of juice, and tried to figure out how to broach the subject of what would happen next.

It seemed, however, that Sark was on the same wavelength. He turned to her as she sat down on a barstool and spoke. “I’m going to need to go back to London at some point to collect Catherine’s things.”

“Scrooge McDuck will get lonely all by himself,” Catherine piped up, a red moustache staining her upper lip.

“We can’t have that,” Sark answered her, and continued. “As soon as she’s settled in here, I’ll leave. It shouldn’t take more than a week. I’ve also got some people I need to talk to about the situation Jack is handling.”

“Are you sure it’s safe?” It was a novel experience, being concerned about Sark’s safety. She wasn’t sure she was completely comfortable with it, and shifted in her chair as she waited for his answer.

“Probably not, but it’s imperative that this be done quickly.” His face was solemn. She knew he was aware of the potential cost of action – to alert the remainders of the Covenant to Sydney’s presence or to the location of Catherine would be disastrous, especially with Sydney still hindered in her movements by her injuries from the last time she went up against them. But she could see that he had weighed the negatives against the benefits of swift action. He looked determined. “The sooner this gets done, the sooner we can go back to a normal life.”

“Sark. Julian. You can’t make me forget that I have a daughter.” She reached across the bar to run a hand over Catherine’s silky hair. “I don’t _want_ to forget. Our lives won’t… we can’t be normal. Not at the moment. I also highly doubt we’ll _ever_ be able to return to normal. But…” Here she took a deep breath, trying to find a way to express it. “Maybe we can’t have normal, but we can have something else, and I’m okay with that.”

“Me too, daddy,” Catherine chimed in.

Sark said nothing, but stared out the window, looking at something Sydney couldn’t see.

\---

(The Story of Catherine the First)

“My mother, your grandmother, was a truly beautiful woman,” her father would say. “When she was born, her parents were so dazzled by her that for the first six months of her life, they didn’t put her down. She was held continuously by anyone who was around, whether she was eating, sleeping, or playing. Finally, she decided one day to wriggle out of the arms that kept her held so close. She crawled around, evading the arms of her parents and well-meaning friends of the family, until she could walk. Her first word was ‘no!’ and when she said no, she always meant it.

“She left home at sixteen, intent on finding her way in a place where nobody knew her. She stowed away on a train, not having any idea where it was bound. That was just the sort of person she was.”

Her father would shake his head, sigh, as if his censure could prevent his daughter from following in her grandmother’s footsteps. The truth was, of course, that it could. “At one point, she crossed a border. She held her breath the entire time the train was searched. The fall of the boots outside her hiding place kept her from making a sound. She wasn’t sure where she was, or what would become of her if she were caught, but it was likely that whatever happened, it would be unpleasant.

“Finally, after hours and hours of waiting, after hours of making not a single sound, the heavy footsteps grew fainter, and then disappeared altogether. The train moved again, picking up speed, and did not stop until it reached its terminus.”

Here Catherine could never keep from sighing in relief, although she had heard the story enough that she could recite it herself. She knew how this particular story would end, but it never failed to involve her. After all, this was her story as well.

“She waited until sundown, when the train was at rest in the stockyard and she could escape unnoticed. The doors were locked, in order to keep the vagrants of the city from using the cars as places to sleep. But your grandmother had talents beyond what a proper young English lady should have. The heavy locks were no match for her. A few minutes later she was climbing out of her hidden compartment and making her way through the stockyard.

“As she weaved in and out between the trains, it became quite apparent where she had ended up. She did not know the Cyrillic alphabet very well at all, nor anything in Russian, but she could make out the word for ‘Moscow’ on all of the trains.”

“Moscow,” Catherine would always echo. She had never been there, and the word itself seemed to carry some magic in its shape. It was, Catherine felt, her past and her future.

“Yes, Moscow. It was a place where your grandmother knew nobody, and for a while she wandered the streets alone, trying to look as inconspicuous as a young woman alone in a dangerous city could look. She spent many cold nights in the churches that were left by the communists, as the churches were the only places that would let her stay the night without recompense.

“During the day, she found herself back on the streets, looking for whatever food she could steal or beg. There weren’t supposed to be beggars– everyone was to work, to be efficient in whatever capacity they had been assigned, so she begged very carefully, and stole even more carefully. A few times, she was very nearly caught, but her beauty shone through even the street grime and the unwashed clothes she wore, and it was difficult for people to accept that someone so young and innocent and _beautiful_ could steal from them.

“One day, she was eating a piece of stolen bread at the base of a statue in a square near the Kremlin when someone sat down beside her and said, in lightly accented English, ‘You are in trouble, and I will help you.’”

Catherine would close her eyes, watching it play out in her mind. Her grandmother, sitting in a dingy blue dress, slowly chewing on the bread, sat looking up at the murky blue sky where birds wheeled and dipped overhead. Catherine was there with her as her father spoke, narrating the story that unfolded while she watched.

“The person was a young woman a little older than my mother, and almost as beautiful. She was going to school a few blocks away, and often went to the pastry shop off that particular square for lunch. And she spoke near-perfect English because she was in training to be an operative for her country. A spy.

“But your grandmother didn’t know this at that time – all she knew was that she was still hungry, that she hadn’t been _really_ clean in weeks, and that someone had discovered her secret. And she was frightened.”

Behind her eyes Catherine could see the two girls, one with matted blonde hair and suspicion radiating off her like an aura, the other calm and smiling slightly, holding out her hand.

“Your grandmother never explained to me all of her reasons for placing her trust in another’s hands that day at the square, but she never regretted it. The girl took her back to her apartment, fed her, let her get clean, loaned her a change of clothes, and eventually became her best friend – her only friend, for a time.”

The women in Catherine’s mind smiled at each other. Her father’s mother was clean, glowing golden, her hair brushed and shining, fanned out around her shoulders. She giggled at something, wrapping her arms around herself and looking up at the other girl.

“The Russian was, of course, Irina Derevko – your other grandmother. She taught my mother Russian with the one condition that she would make sure that Irina’s English was flawless. Irina always said that my mother was closer to her than her own sisters – which, she would joke, was ironic, because one of her sisters had my mother’s name. Ekaterina. Catherine.”

“Like me,” Catherine would say, eyes still shut, hovering somewhere between dream and daydream, her grandmothers giggling over something she couldn’t hear.

“Like you. You are Catherine the Second, Kitten. She was Catherine the First.” He would drop a kiss on each of her closed eyelids, then pull the covers tight around her like an embrace. “Now sleep, Catherine the Second.”

She always did, and could never say the next morning what her dreams had been.

\---

It was nearly midnight, and Sydney was afraid to leave her room.

She felt like an idiot. He was not, she reasoned, in the living room. He would not be lurking in the shadows, waiting for her to get a glass of water so he could murder her as she opened the cabinet door. In fact, he was likely asleep.

Sark was asleep in her house. It was surely a sign of the impending arrival of Armageddon.

She threw back the covers and reached for the robe tossed over the chair in the corner. The house was always cold at night, and she wrapped it tighter around her as she made her way slowly down the hall, barely lit by the half-moon that shone outside the windows in the living room and at the end of the hallway, to the darkened kitchen.

There was, of course, nobody there. _Stupid, stupid Sydney_, she berated herself as she searched the refrigerator for the bottle of juice. _And if he had been here, what would you have done? Shot him with the pistol you keep in the freezer?_

The juice had obviously been hidden. She bent down, determined to find it – living with real live people could really suck at times, as she was beginning to realize – and heard a floorboard creak as she was reaching to the back of the bottom shelf.

She froze, partially grasping the bottle of juice. Her grip tightened around it as she slowly rose and turned, brandishing the juice like a weapon.

Sark stood at the entry to the kitchen. “What were you planning to do with that?” he asked. “Stain my shirt?”

“What are you doing?” Sydney asked, voice shrill.

“The same thing you were doing, I assume,” he answered, passing a hand through his hair. His voice was sleepy, and when he spoke again, it was around a little yawn. “I was thirsty.”

“So you thought you could just…”

“Sydney.” He stepped toward her. She backed up into the door of the refrigerator, which shut as she bumped it, turning out the only light in the room besides the moon. “Sydney, I thought you were okay with this. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but I do get thirsty in the middle of the night, and I do occasionally make decisions without nefarious intent. Sometimes, those two things coincide. This is one of those times.”

She opened the door again and found that he was a few feet away, staring down at her with an expression of sleepy amusement on his shadowed face. He’d said that he didn’t mean to make her uncomfortable, but it was difficult to believe him when he stood so close in a pair of boxers and a thin white undershirt. She had barely been around him without Catherine nearby. Without his daughter, in the dim light of the open fridge, he seemed younger, more like the Sark she had known six years ago. It made her want to run as fast as she could with her injured leg to somewhere safe, and hidden.

Sark seemed to pick up on the expression that passed across her face. “What happened to you, Sydney?” he asked, moving closer. “You used to fight, even when it wasn’t necessary or prudent. Now you want to run. I can see it.”

“The Covenant _happened_, Julian, and you’re crowding me.” She wanted him away from her, wanted to get out of the kitchen and go back to her bed. She might be able to, if she could just buy a few seconds… She placed both hands on his chest and shoved. As she pushed him, she put too much weight on her weak leg and lost her balance, falling into the motion.

He managed to catch her, but it was a very close thing. She had fallen forward, tried to reach for a cabinet door, and then he was helping her regain her balance and setting her on her feet, her hands on his shoulders and his hands around her arms. “Maybe you need crowding, because this place isn’t you. It’s convenient, and it’s comfortable, but it’s not you.”

God, he made her angry. She wanted to push him away again, but he held her tight. She twisted against him, trying to break free. “You don’t know me.”

The refrigerator door closed again, punctuating his words as the kitchen darkened. “I do know you, Sydney, and the only bit of you I’ve seen while I’ve been here was when you tried to put me flat on my back just now.” He relaxed his grip on her arms slightly, but bent closer as if trying to see her in the dim light of the moonlit kitchen. “I’m going to make sure that you stay alive. You don’t have to trust me – I don’t really expect you to. What I do expect you to do is be who I know you to be. It’s not worth having you alive if you’re not going to be that Sydney.”

“Why?” she couldn’t keep herself from asking. “She’s been dead for six years, and I’ve been okay with that.” In that instant she hated him for forcing her to say it, forcing her to humiliate herself by admitting her cowardice. “Why do you have to dredge it all up now, when I’ve almost managed to forget that there was ever something else?”

He let go of one arm to stroke her cheek gently, and she could feel the ridge on his forefinger where the trigger of his gun had left a callus. “I liked her,” he whispered, leaning in. “I _like_ her.”

His lips brushed her cheek in a fleeting caress, a touch that was nothing more than a reassurance. Then his mouth moved to hers, the curve of his lips fitting against her own so perfectly that for a moment she could have sworn that they had done this before. She closed her eyes, seeing the kisses they’d never shared projected in a montage against her eyelids. Then he deepened the kiss and the images became fuzzy and then faded away entirely.

She felt his teeth nibbling gently at her lower lip, using just enough suction to hold her in the moment. Her mouth opened, seemingly on its own, and he was inside, his tongue sliding against hers. He tasted salty and sweet and hot and she thought for a moment that if she were to drown, this would be what it would feel like. There was a pressure building in her chest, and the feeling grew as he pressed closer. Both of his hands came up to her face, tracing patterns over her cheeks and back over the ridge of her ears, tickling over sensitive spots and coming to rest in her hair, holding her against him.

He seemed to be surrounding her, giving her strength with his presence. He seemed to be taking over, lighting fires in places that had been cold since she had run away, filling her with a glow she could feel. She softened against him, turning her face up and lacing her arms around his neck.

Then he pulled away, and everything went cold again.

“Sydney…”

Now she _really_ wanted to hit him. “Don’t say anything. Catherine is sleeping in the next room – believe me, I understand.” She turned and walked slowly to the end of the bar, turning back to look at him. “Make sure you rinse out your glass when you’re done. Good night.”

She continued down the hall as silently as she could. The sound of running water reached her as she neared her bedroom, but shut off quickly. It was a long time before she fell asleep.

\---

When she went to the kitchen in the morning, all the dishes in the sink had been washed and put away. The bar had been wiped up, and Sark sat at one of the stools, cradling a mug of tea in his hands and looking up at her calmly. He was wearing a deep grey suit with a blue shirt and tie that set off his eyes, and beside him was a small suitcase.

“You’re leaving _now_?” she asked, not bothering to keep the accusation out of her voice “I thought you were going to wait until...”

“I’m finishing up some business in London. I’ll be back in a few days. You’ll hardly notice that I’m gone.”

“Oh, I might not, but your _daughter_ probably will. You’re just going to leave her here alone with me?” Now the panic was setting in, and with it, the embarrassment. “What if I do something wrong?”

“Sydney, you’ll be fine. She’s an easy child.” He seemed amused at her question, and it made Sydney wish she still had the ability to kick him in the face. _Asshole_. “It’s not as if she’s an infant. You don’t have to change her, spoon-feed her… all you have to do is be there, give her a bath or two, and make sure she doesn’t starve. She’ll do the rest, I promise you.”

“Give her a bath? But…”

“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Besides, you can just draw the water and sit in the next room as long as you listen to make sure she doesn’t accidentally hit her head on something and drown. She really doesn’t like having people watch her bathe, anyway. Privacy is a big thing with her these days.” He was _definitely_ laughing at her now.

She took a deep breath, subduing the panic. “Okay, we’ll be fine. But what about you? You’re not going to go kill someone, are you? I thought you’d gotten out of the business.”

“You’re right. These days I only kill for pleasure.”

“Ah…”

“Sydney, don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything illegal. Rather, I’m not planning to do anything illegal. I’m just going to pack up our things in London, ship them here, make sure Catherine’s preschool knows that she’s not going to be returning next year, and make arrangements to lease out the flat. It’s not kidnapping or assault with a deadly weapon, Syd – it’s business.”

He seemed so calm about all of it – the same calm she always saw in him when he was about to do something highly illegal and mostly immoral. It scared her now in a way it never did when she was fighting against him. She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him, force him to be sensible, but his eyes were glacier-cold and his entire demeanor radiated impatience. “What time do you get back?” she found herself asking, though she would have sworn she intended to warn him off doing anything rash.

“It should be around eight at night on Thursday, if all goes according to plan.” He sipped his tea, pressed his lips together and then sighed. “I’ll be back, Sydney. You and Catherine will be fine together. You’re not going to do anything wrong.”

“I know. Just… be careful.” God, she sounded pathetic. The man had been taking care of himself since God only knew when. He didn’t need her to admonish him to drink his milk and eat his veggies. She managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes, and tried for a note of sarcasm. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Would I?” He took another drink of tea and looked at her innocently. “Now that that’s all concluded, I need to wake up Catherine and then leave. Security takes forever these days. Have fun with her, Sydney.”

“I will,” she answered, and was shocked to find that she was no longer nervous.

He smiled slightly, as if she had spoken aloud, and then stood. As she watched him stride down the hallway, she picked up the half-empty mug of tea that he had been drinking and took a sip. It was lukewarm.

\---

Catherine and Sydney stood on the porch, watching Sark as he lifted a hand in a brief wave while steering the sleek black Mercedes out of the driveway. After he had disappeared around the first bend in the road, Catherine looked up and smiled. “Just us girls now, right?”

Syd couldn’t help but grin. “Just us girls. How about chocolate ice cream for breakfast?” Catherine’s giggle and the trusting slide of her hand into Sydney’s made her forget that she had ever been afraid.

\---“What are you doing?”

Sydney looked up to find Catherine standing next to her chair, peering down at the notebook and text on Sydney’s lap. “Lesson plans. I’m a literature teacher, and right now I’m working on plans for teaching Shakespeare to a bunch of sixth formers.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Sydney said patiently, “that’s my job.”

Catherine’s tone of voice was exasperated. “I _know_ that’s your job. I meant, why are you doing it now? It’s the summer holidays. School isn’t in session, is it? It won’t be for a while, so there’s no reason for you to work on school things.”

It was a day and a half into their time alone, and Sydney had assumed that Catherine was taking her nap. Apparently, she was mistaken. “Why aren’t you napping?”

“I wasn’t tired!” A calculating gleam sparkled in her eyes as she added, “And besides – I wanted to spend time with you.”

Sydney honestly had no idea how Sark dealt with this child when she was absolutely determined to do something. Every hour she spent in Catherine’s – admittedly exhausting – company made her respect his efforts as a parent more and more. “You think I’m a soft-touch, don’t you? You think you can just say something cute like that and I’ll give in?”

Catherine didn’t say anything but continued to look up at Sydney with a wide smile on her face.

“You’re partially right.” Sydney ruffled Catherine’s hair and continued. “We can spend time together as soon as you finish your nap.” She turned Catherine to face the door to the living room and gave her a gentle shove toward it.

Catherine went, but there was a definite pout on her face as she turned to give Sydney one last look before going back to her room. Sydney watched her go before turning back to her notebooks, but found it nearly impossible to concentrate.

\---

Sark stood in the middle of the living room of his London flat, surveying the work he’d just finished. The boxes were packed and ready to ship, a large heap of garbage sat off to one side waiting to be bagged, the furniture had already been moved into storage, and the cleaning service had called to confirm that they would be coming later to get the flat ready to sell. There was only one thing he had left to do. He checked his watch. Two hours left, and he was ready.

\---

Sark arrived a half-hour early at the small café near the British Museum, watching the tourists as he sipped his tea. It was a sunny day, for London, and the mild weather brought out people in full force. He amused himself by eavesdropping on conversations in several languages, wishing for a moment that Jack wouldn’t show up so he could enjoy an afternoon of solitude.

Of course, Jack showed up. Jack _always_ showed up. In this case, he was ten minutes earlier than the appointed meeting time and wearing a scowl.

“Bad news?” Sark asked in lieu of a greeting, wondering what it was the remnants of the Covenant had done to put such a dark expression on his face.

“What? No, no bad news.” A group of Japanese tourists swarmed by, and one little old lady in a pastel floppy hat turned and snapped a picture of them. Jack narrowed his eyes, and the glower deepened. “I _hate_ London. Excuse me for a minute.”

As Sark watched, Jack chased after the group, found the woman who had taken their picture, and berated her in Japanese so rapid that it was almost incomprehensible, even to Sark. Jack reached into his pocket – for a moment, Sark wondered if he was going to pull a gun on the woman – and pulled out a wad of twenty-pound notes. He counted off five bills, took the film out of the camera, exposed it, and then shoved it into his jacket along with the roll of pounds.

Sark studied Jack as he walked back, shoulders hunched and very obviously annoyed. “That woman was definitely a Yakuza crime boss,” Sark deadpanned. “Wise move.”

“Better to be vigilant for no reason than to be careless and dead,” Jack snapped. “Can we get to business? I’m pressed for time.”

“As am I. What do you have for me?”

“Irina’s contacts have located the three highest-ranking living members of what used to be the Covenant. They’re using different names, and are obviously no longer calling themselves the Covenant, but all three seem to be communicating with each other more frequently than is normal for old business acquaintances. We’ve located two of them, but the whereabouts of the third are unknown as of my last communiqué from the contacts. When all three are located, we’ll track their conversations for a while, see how organized they are, how many people they have working for them, how many know about Catherine, and from there we’ll decide who needs to be taken out. This _will_ be dealt with, Julian.”

Sark nodded and took another sip of his tea. “You’ll let me know when you decide to eliminate them, Jack? I’d like to have a hand in it, if you don’t mind.”

Jack looked as surprised as Sark had ever seen him look. “I thought you’d gotten out of the business.”

Sark’s smile was humorless and sharp-edged. “This isn’t business.”

\---

The first of the boxes arrived at Sydney’s house four days after Sark had left for London. Catherine and Sydney tore into them together, and in the largest of the boxes Sydney found a beat-up stuffed duck and a folded note on top of the other neatly packed items. The duck she handed to Catherine, who squealed “Scroogie!” and hugged it close to her. The note she read, first to herself and then aloud.

It was short, written in Sark’s spiky, neat print. “Dear Catherine and Sydney,” she read, “I hope the two of you aren’t getting into too much trouble. You can start unpacking these now, or wait for me if you like. I’ll be back on Friday afternoon. Sydney, don’t let Catherine have chocolate ice cream for breakfast, no matter how much she begs. Business here is coming along well. Julian.”

Did that, she wondered, mean that he had good news about the work that was being done against those still loyal to the Covenant?

Whatever it was, it would have to wait until Friday.

\---

The request came for the first time that night, as Sydney was tucking Catherine into bed. The four previous nights, Sydney had read four different stories from the collection of the Brothers Grimm she had among the many tomes in her library. Tonight, the request was different. “Tell me a story, Mom?”

“_Tell_ you a story? I’m not really good at that. Can’t I just read you something?”

“No.” Catherine’s voice was resolute, her face set. “I want to hear one of yours.”

“I don’t know if…” At the pleading look Catherine sent her, Sydney sighed. “Okay, I’ll try. But I’m not going to be as good as your father.”

“It’s okay. You just need practice.”

Sydney nodded, took a deep breath, and began. “You remember my father?” At Catherine’s nod, she continued. “My father, Jack, is one of the strongest people I know. I know a lot of very strong people, Catherine, but all of them respect my father. He’s just one of those people that commands respect.”

“Like my daddy?”

_Christ_. “Sort of.”

“What should I call your father?” Catherine asked before she could continue.

“I think you should ask him that. He wouldn’t like me telling you to call him something he might not approve of. He’s a very dignified sort of person. And, if I may continue with the story, he doesn’t mess around.”

“With what?” Catherine asked

“With anything. Do you want me to tell this?”

“Yes,” she said, and was silent.

Sydney took a deep breath before she started again. “My father didn’t tell me a lot of stories when I was little. Before my mom left, she was always the one who told me stories. She’d read me _Alice in Wonderland_ or _The Wizard of Oz_, and she’d do all the voices. My father just never got into the habit of telling me stories, even after mom left. So most of the stuff I know about his childhood, I know from overhearing things, from looking at old pictures, and from the things I vaguely remember my grandparents telling me. This is one of those last ones.”

She searched her memory, trying to find the exact words, intertwined with the way she’d felt when her grandmother had stroked her hair and tucked her in tight, telling her stories all the while.

“When he was eleven,” Sydney began, “my grandparents took him on a family vacation to Mexico. He had just begun learning Spanish in school, and my grandmother encouraged him to talk to the Mexicans, to practice his Spanish. They were on the beach one day, she and my grandfather reading under an umbrella, when they realized that my father was nowhere to be seen.

“They looked up and down the length of beach, but it was quite crowded and noisy, and although they called his name, nobody responded. Finally, as they were walking back to their umbrella, they caught sight of him. He was talking with another boy his age, although they couldn’t hear what the two were talking about. My grandmother ran up to him and started yelling, asking him where he’d been and why he hadn’t told them where he was going. ‘Don’t you ever do that again, Jack!’ she said.

“’Jack?’ asked the boy my father had been talking with. ‘You told me your name was Juan and your family came from Veracruz!’”

Sydney paused, enjoying Catherine’s laughter, enjoying the memories of her grandmother pressing a kiss onto her forehead and smiling down on her. “That,” she continued, “was back when my grandmother thought my father was going to be an actor. When I was little, I always assumed he was a traveling salesman, but looking back, the story explains a lot.”

“It was a good story,” Catherine said sleepily.

“Thank you. I’ll get better,” she promised.

“Daddy will teach you. He’s the best.” Catherine snuggled deeper into the covers, muffling a yawn. “Goodnight, Mom.”

“Goodnight, Kitten,” she said, kissing her cheek softly once more before walking to the doorway and turning out the lights. “Sweet dreams.”

\---

She was sitting in the darkened living room, drinking a glass of wine and watching Mr. Darcy dance with Elizabeth at Netherfield, when the knock came on the door. She jumped up, stubbing the toe of her good foot and splashing some of the deep red wine on herself, and walked, limping and swearing in a low voice, to the door. She paused first to find the loaded gun in the false bottom of one of the drawers of the front hall cabinet. Nobody should be here this late at night. Sark wasn’t due home for another day and a half, and the village and school were far enough away that it wasn’t as if someone would stumble upon her cottage by mistake in the middle of the night.

That thought foremost in her mind, she let the door swing open and leveled her gun at whoever it was who’d made the mistake of coming near her house this late at night.

“This is a wonderful welcome, Sydney. It’s just the way I’d imagined it would be, in fact. Might you put the gun down before you accidentally damage something I would miss later?”

Sark stood on the doorstep, looking mussed by travel but strangely alert for this late at night, although that could have been attributed to the gun aimed at his head.

She withdrew the gun. “The safety was on. I would have unlocked it if you had been someone I actually wanted to kill.”

“You don’t want to kill me?” A slight grin passed across his face, but it was gone before she could remark upon it. “Sydney, I’m touched.”

“I’ve still got the gun in my hand, Sark. Don’t push it.”

“Noted.” The smile was full-on this time, and it made her want to recoil from its brightness. _Damn you_, she thought, but before she could voice it, he spoke again. “Aren’t you going to ask me how London was?”

“Rainy and gray, I’d assume.”

“You’d assume wrong. The weather was actually quite lovely. But that wasn’t what I meant.” His eyes dropped to the wine on her shirt for the first time since she’d answered the door. “What happened to you? Get into a fight with a nice Bordeaux?”

She couldn’t help but smile at the image that presented. “It was insulting me.”

“Well, then. It’s obvious, the wine must die.”

“I thought the same thing,” she said, stepping aside to let him all the way in. He set his carry-on on the floor and shrugged silently out of his coat as she watched, trying not to enjoy the smoothness of the motion as he folded it neatly and draped it across the back of the chair. “Why are you here, by the way? Your note said you’d be back on Friday afternoon.”

“I finished earlier than expected, and took an earlier flight back. I thought you’d be glad to have the help with Catherine again.” His voice was mild, his manner calm and not at all threatening. She still, however, found this Sark more disconcerting than the one she had been used to. This Sark was trying to be _friendly_. This Sark obviously wanted something from her, then, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to own up to what it was.

“She’s been great. We’ve had a lot of fun.”

“That’s good. I’m glad she hasn’t missed me too much, then.”

Sydney laughed at that. “You’d think she didn’t miss you at all, except when she wails and pulls out her hair and rubs ashes over her face. But that’s only every five minutes or so.”

They stood for a minute, smiling at each other as if this easy rapport were completely normal for both of them. Then his eyes flickered back to the wine stain on her shirt, and his smile quivered as if he was holding back laughter. “Do you want to put on a different shirt while I help you destroy some of that spiteful wine?’

She nodded. “I’ll just… do that.”

_I’ll just do that? God, I’m an idiot._

\---

When she walked back into the living room, Sark was sitting on the couch, wine in hand, smiling up at her. The atmosphere in the room seemed altered, and even his amusement at her movie of choice seemed to be filled with something _else_.

“Weren’t you watching this the day we came?” he asked, eyes following Mr. Collins as he paced around the room, pontificating on his reasons for marrying, then turning to look at her.

“Could have been,” she answered, taking the glass of wine he offered as she sat down next to him. “A lot of that day was really a blur for me.” She took a sip, trying to look anywhere but at him.

“Sydney…”

“Julian, don’t bother. I know what you think of me.” Fuck, where had that come from? That was _not_ what she had intended to say. But it had come out, and it didn’t seem to be stopping. “You made it abundantly clear the night before you left that you think I’m a coward, that I’m just hiding here because I can’t handle the rest of the world. You don’t need to say anything more on the subject.” She tossed back the rest of the wine in the glass and reached for the bottle. By some miracle she managed to pour another glass without spilling it on herself.

“It seems,” he said slowly, still watching her, “that I _do_ need to say something more. Or do something more. Because you are laboring under the mistaken impression that I don’t like you, that I think you’re a weak woman who needs to hide.”

“It’s not mistaken,” she interrupted quickly. “I can tell that you do.”

He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Frankly, I was surprised to find you here, when I did finally find you. I was so sure you’d be doing something dangerous, fighting back for everything the Covenant did to you. But the rest of it? Sydney, I don’t think you’re weak. You’re hiding from life, but it’s not really… it’s not something I ever expected you to do, and it’s going against who I know you are.” She looked up at him, ready to interrupt again, but fell silent at the look in his eyes, bright with anger. “But all of that… do you think I’d even be bothering with this if I didn’t like you?”

She moved the glass to her lips again, hand shaking, only to have him snatch it away. “Look at me. I like you, Sydney. I’ve said it before, but it obviously didn’t sink in, so I’m going to say it again, and you better be paying attention. I like you.” His mouth curved slightly. “A lot.”

She wanted her wine back. The thought came into her mind, a last bit of sanity, before he carefully set both glasses on the coffee table, then leaned in and kissed her.

God, he was good at this. His fingers stroked lightly at her neck, almost tickling, making her smile against his mouth. The kiss deepened, their tongues meeting, sliding together in a wine-flavored kiss that made her feel drunker than she had while drinking. He seemed to notice when she swayed, and pulled back slightly to look intently down at her. “Sydney…”

She shook her head. “Don’t. Please, just…” She couldn’t think, looking at him. She didn’t want to think. It felt like he was the only one who remembered who she used to be, the only one who still saw her as that person. Instead of continuing, she pressed her lips to his again, moving her hands to his shoulders and down his chest to the hem of his shirt.

A rumble sounded deep in his throat. She could feel it in her mouth, in her chest where he was pressed against her. It was almost a purr, and God, she wanted to crawl into him, to forget everything. She tugged his shirt up over his head, tossing it aside. It landed on the TV, partially obscuring the screen. Suddenly the pace was faster, more urgent, and they were both trying to shed their clothes as quickly as possible without breaking the kiss.

“Should we,” he breathed against her mouth as his hands teased under the elastic band of her pajama pants, “perhaps move this somewhere more private?”

“My – God, my room,” she gasped as his finger plunged deeper to spread her own moisture over her clitoris.

He nodded, kissing her deeply once more before he pulled away, hauled her up, and strode out of the living room. She glanced one last time around the living room, where their shirts and his pants had come to rest on various pieces of furniture, and decided to ignore it until morning. None of it mattered. For the first time in six years, she didn’t hurt.

\---

She woke up in the morning with Sark’s arm draped over her back, his lips inches away from hers. She was leaning to cross those inches when Catherine dive-bombed them.

“_DADDYDADDYTHERE’SAMANINTHEHOUSEANDHE’SAFTERUS!_”

Sark was instantly awake, still naked, reaching under her pillow and finding the gun she still slept with. He disengaged the safety just as a man wearing all black and carrying an Uzi ran into the room. Sark’s reflexes were impeccable. The man didn’t stand a chance, and with the back of his head blown all over Sydney’s tastefully decorated bedroom, he wasn’t standing at all. A perfectly round bullet-hole marred his forehead in the exact middle.

Calmly, Sark handed the gun to Sydney. He picked up the phone, dialed, and spoke. “We found the third one.”

Arvin Sloane’s sightless eyes continued to stare at Sydney’s ceiling as his blood stained the carpet.

Catherine was still staring wide-eyed at the body. She had not moved since the gun went off, and Sydney moved to hold her. “You saved our lives and yours, Kitten,” she murmured against Catherine’s hair. “You did well.”

Sark hung up the phone and turned to his daughter. “I think this counts as imminent mortal danger.” He wrapped his waist in a sheet that had fallen off the bed, and moved to take them into his arms. “You’re so brave,” he said. “You’re both so brave.”

\---

“What I don’t understand,” Irina said to Jack as they sat at the bar with Sark and Sydney a day later, “is why he came himself. He could have sent someone. He’s been out of the business for ages. The world thought he had changed, thought he was running Omnifam and doing humanitarian work in the Middle East. He didn’t need to risk coming here.”

Jack’s voice was calm, his expression as sad as Sydney had ever seen it. “He wanted to see Sydney, I think. But mostly, I think he wanted to know that it would be done properly. He couldn’t trust this to anyone – he _had_ to do it himself.”

“I just can’t believe he’s dead,” Sydney said, looking at each of them in turn. “I can’t believe he’s dead and it’s over. It can’t be over, can it?”

“It’s over,” Jack answered quietly. “We made sure that when the third was found, the other two would be taken care of. I got a call from my contact in Thailand this morning. They were murdered in a brothel, an apparent robbery.”

“Grandpa Jack, what’s a brothel?” Catherine asked from the doorway.

Jack didn’t miss a beat, although Sydney noticed that Sark seemed to be biting his lip. “It’s an alleyway. Why aren’t you taking your nap?”

“I’m not tired,” she replied. “And I wanted to spend time with you…”

\---

Jack and Irina left the next day, after helping them to burn Sloane’s body and hiding his remains in the peat bogs. The blood came out of the rug and the wallpaper with more ease than Sydney had expected, and a few days after everything had ended, there was almost no trace that anything had occurred.

For some reason, this worried Sydney.

Although, being honest with herself, she knew the reason that it worried her. She didn’t want to admit it, because to admit it would make it all real. She wanted to ignore it, bury it like she had buried Sloane, to try to make it all disappear.

Sark wouldn’t let her.

He knocked on her door that night after Catherine had been tucked in and told her bedtime story. It was the first time since he had killed Sloane that he had been in the room, except to help remove the bloodstains. “Can we talk?” he asked, as straightforward now as he’d been the day he had arrived on her doorstep.

God, he was going to leave. His expression was solemn, and his voice was soft, as if it were the only way he could cushion the blow. He’d shaken her entire world, the safe, warm cocoon that she’d so carefully built around herself, and now he was going to leave.

She wanted to kill him.

She nodded, gestured for him to come in.

He sat on the edge of the bed next to her and looked down at his hands. “It’s done. Everything’s in place, Catherine is safe… we can go.”

Sydney’s voice was hoarse around the knot in her throat. “You’re going? Where?”

“Italy, I think. I found a place in Rome, near a decent school. Catherine… she loves the food there, and the weather. I thought we’d try it out for a while.”

“When?” It came out automatically, and his answer sounded just as automatic.

“When we can get everything packed, I think. Most of our things are still in boxes. It shouldn’t take too long to get it there.”

“Oh.” They were silent for a while, Sydney looking out the window, Sark continuing to stare down at his clasped hands. She felt numb, and not even the infinite green outside the window could tug at her, make her feel what it usually did. Finally she gathered herself together and managed to speak again. “So when will I get to see Catherine again?”

Sark looked up, eyes startled. “I hoped you’d come with us.”

_I hoped you’d come with us_. The words startled her out of her numbness. “Leave Ireland?” she asked stupidly, the only thing she could think of to say.

“Sydney, this house, this job… it’s not all that’s out there. You have so much more in you. I know it. You know it.” His voice, for the first time that she could remember, was pleading. “Come with us. Catherine needs you to be her mother. I…” His eyes moved back to his hands as his voice dropped, grew quieter. “I need you.”

He looked so young and small sitting there, staring down at his hands. He looked like she felt – beaten, pummeled by life and then disappointed by everyone in it. He looked like she had felt until he had showed up on her doorstep.

She never wanted to feel like that again. She _needed_ him. “I’ll come with you.” Somehow there was laughter bubbling up, and the expression in his eyes as they shot up from his hands to connect with hers made it come out. “I’ll come with you,” she repeated, and kissed him.

From the doorway, Catherine smiled.


End file.
